The two most common types of "anti-barking" laws are the multiple-household laws and the consecutive-disruption ordinances.

The Multiple Household Laws:

The multiple-household law is the catch-22 of animal control ordinances. According to that set of laws, the barking of your neighbor's dog is only deemed to be illegal after the case goes to court and a judge rules that it is so. The catch is that the court will not agree to hear your case unless you are first able to persuade some of the people from the neighboring households to join you in pursuing a legal case that is sure to be as contentious and upsetting as it is long and drawn-out.

But precious few people want to get involved in a big legal battle. So try as you may, the neighbors will almost never sign on for a thing like that. And that's the end of it, as the authorities deny you legal protection based on how your neighbors choose to behave.

Imagine a parallel situation in which someone repeatedly burglarizes your home. But when you turn to the police for help, they refuse to arrest the culprit, because after checking with your neighbors, the cops learned that the people who live in the houses around yours don't care if you get ripped off or not. And based on that, the authorities then conclude that the thief should be allowed to victimize you all he wants, and that, indeed, they will arrest you if you are too zealous in trying to stop him.

That would make no sense at all, of course, yet that is the essence of the multiple household laws, which are the only criminal ordinances in existence that require more than one complainant to come forward before law enforcement will agree to take action.

The Consecutive Disruption Laws

The consecutive-disruption laws really just barely make a pretense of trying to prevent chronic barking.

Under a consecutive-disruption law a dog can bark habitually, as long as he does not continue on for more than a certain number of minutes in a row. For example, allowing one's dog to bark is only deemed to be illegal if he does it for more than twenty-minutes consecutively. However, if the dog falls quiet for more than sixty-seconds during that twenty minute period, then the clock resets, and the dog can bark on nonstop for yet another twenty minutes without violating the law.